


Boyhood Bravery

by burymeinziam



Series: Poison Oak [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 20:51:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burymeinziam/pseuds/burymeinziam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is a sunrise and a sunset and nothing in between</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boyhood Bravery

**i.**

They met on the corner in the middle of a fork in a street when rain was pouring and blurring the lines of everything Zayn thought he had ever known. His hair clings to his forehead, thin fingers, pale and shaking from the cold as he pushes it away from his eyes.

He asks the boy with the pretty brown eyes for a smoke to which the boy replies “They’re bad for you.”

Zayn just tells him that he isn’t all that afraid of dying and then he’s looking into this boy’s eyes and he’s falling. He’s falling and there’s a hole opening up in his chest echoing hope and a chance and it’s all in these chocolate brown eyes.

Zayn cracks, everything pouring out of him at once. It’s word vomit spewing forth in a fit of vulnerability, but Zayn somehow knows that he’s okay with him. That he’s a single celled dot wandering somewhere along the planes of the universe and maybe this beautiful boy can join him.

And they fall together that night, twisted up in a tangle of Zayn’s blankets with this Liam boy’s head pillowed against Zayn’s chest and Zayn’s arms around Liam’s stomach.

They fall together and Zayn knows that there’s no going back.

**ii.**

Somehow, walking into his messy apartment with this strange boy in tow, this strange boy who has somehow breathed life into Zayn’s existence, reminds Zayn of how much he doesn’t like being himself.

Liam stands in the center of the living room, awkward smile peaking from plump pink lips that Zayn wants to feel pressed against every inch of his skin, like he’s waiting for something; like he’s waiting for Zayn.

Zayn tells him his place isn’t much because it isn’t. The electricity has been off for a while and the neighborhood kind of sucks. He sits down in his favorite chair, stuffing spilling out in the same way Zayn’s heart seems to be spilling from his chest as Liam is stepping a bit closer.

 _One. Two. Three._ Liam steps, Zayn’s heart pounds.

He isn’t sure what this is, but it’s beginning to feel like home.

**iii.**

It’s the way Liam looks at him, light from the crackling television reflecting in his eyes echoing an emotion Zayn isn’t so sure he’s able to deal with. It makes his head spin, waves of dizziness taking over and bending at his brain and Zayn tells him so, fingers shaking against the realization.

Liam doesn’t seem to mind in the same way Zayn doesn’t mind when Liam leaves toothpaste all over the bathroom counter and dirty socks on the bedroom floor. Zayn tells him that he’s used to falling down a lot, when the floor opens up underneath the thousands of broken promises delivered by thousands of broken people.

Liam looks back at him and it’s too intense so Zayn looks away and hopes to God that he’s not one of those broken people, but he knows deep down that he probably is. Zayn is shattered and his heart is too fragile.

But there’s something here that feels a lot like love and no matter how much Zayn knows that he should, he can’t quite give it up.

**iv.**

They’re sitting on a park bench and children are laughing and playing and somehow the sound of their happiness only makes Zayn feel lonelier. His eyes are burning from the sun even though he’s wearing sunglasses but Liam laces their fingers together and Zayn’s insides twist up at the gesture. Liam is tracing outlines around the contours of Zayn’s heart and Zayn isn’t quite sure how he’s doing it. Zayn can see the way people are looking at them: a too broken boy and another who is too in love living in a world that isn’t quite big enough to contain every single whispered secret.

Liam breathes his name and Zayn looks into his eyes and they’re burning with something Zayn doesn’t think his heart can handle. Liam is looking at him with those eyes and Zayn just knows what Liam wants to say; what he wants Zayn to say. Liam is looking at him, but Zayn doesn’t think he sees. Liam doesn’t see him.

Sometimes the sunlight hurts.

**v.**

When Zayn breathes in the air is cold, almost freezing in his lungs even though the electricity has been shut off for a week now and the heat is a lingering presence in the air. He isn’t sure how, but bugs have begun to take over the apartment. Zayn can feel them crawling and climbing all over his knobby knees. He looks over at Liam and somehow Liam always manages to smile, lips parting and teeth showing in a slightly crooked grin that tugs at the strings of Zayn’s too-fragile heart. The tilt to Liam’s lips looks a lot like “I love you” and Zayn can’t seem to hide the way his fingers shake against the realization. It makes something stop and stutter in his heart and he wonders if Liam knows how quickly Zayn can feel himself falling apart every time he breathes the four letters in Zayn’s name in a soft exhale of warm air against  too-cold skin.

**vi.**

The warmth of Liam’s voice seeps into Zayn’s shoulders and sinks into his skin before settling into the steady beat of his pulse, pounding in his ears as he asks the inevitable question.

“What were your parents like?”

The question is as welcome as cancer but something inside of Zayn makes him feel as though he needs to answer. Fear is creeping into every single one of his nerve endings, nervous tissue twitching along his spine, bent over slightly as if to hide from Liam’s words. Liam’s voice is smooth as velvet, but his words cut like razors.

“I don’t have parents.”

Zayn’s voice hangs in the air like exhausted smoke circling away from the windowpane clouding up the frigid air.

“That’s silly.” Zayn can see how hard Liam swallows. “Everyone comes from somewhere.”

Zayn fights back the urge to laugh, images of broken plates and shattered voices and loud voices filled with too much regret echoing in his mind.

“Not me,” he answers and Zayn wishes Liam knew, but knows that he can’t.

**vii.**

They’re sitting against the stack of old newspapers Zayn uses for a dining room table and Zayn can feel the way Liam’s eyes are burning questions into his skin. It’s a stark contrast to the cold air surrounding him and Zayn just wishes he could stop shaking, if only for a moment. The night before Liam had whispered words of love into the crook of Zayn’s neck but all they did was turn Zayn colder than he ever thought he could be.

Liam loves Zayn but he doesn’t know him. He doesn’t see the cracks inside Zayn’s chest, hollowed out from words that have been uttered so many times before by so many people who were only lying. Those broken people who make broken promises they can never seem to keep.

Liam thinks Zayn is this perfect human being, who was made to save him from everything crushing the innocent heart beating in his chest, but Zayn isn’t that guy and he never will be. It’s all too much of everything Zayn can never be for another person and all Liam sees is the Technicolor dream of what he wishes Zayn could be.

If Liam could only see; if Zayn could claw of this layer of skin that hides and lies and conceals everything he really is then Liam wouldn’t love him.

He just wouldn’t.

**viii.**

They’re sitting at the park again, Liam’s elbows resting against his knees peeking out from underneath cut off shorts. There’s a downward tilt to his lips and a creeping darkness echoing in his eyes and the fact that it’s all Zayn’s fault makes him hate himself harder than he ever has before. Zayn clears his throat in an attempt to speak but the words dry up and decay before they even reach his tongue.

He watches as a little girl scrambles over the barrier of a nearby sandbox. She wants to play with this boy but he doesn’t seem to like her judging by the way he reaches out and pushes her away. The girl falls with a cry, giant wet tears bursting from her eyes and something inside of Zayn cracks.

“Do you remember the last time you brought me here?” He asks, somehow managing to look at Liam. “Everything was wrapped in these silvery layers…”

Sunlight, Zayn remembers. The sunlight hurt.

Liam nods and tells him yes. He does. Liam remembers the little things Zayn did to make his heart skip but all Zayn can remember is the way his face looked just before they left, hopeful eyes filled with romantic intentions and high expectations but never once did he ask if Zayn wanted to be the boy of his dreams; the boy Liam thinks he is.

“I remember it differently,” Zayn says and he can see the flash of pain in Liam’s eyes.

He wishes he could lie.

**ix.**

Zayn’s face feels swollen.

It’s swollen in the same way his heart is bursting out of his chest.

Swollen like the thoughts inside of Liam’s head telling him that Zayn is an angel even though that’s all too far from being true.

Zayn is no angel.

He has no words and all he can do is cry.

He’s a monster.

**x.**

Zayn is alone and it’s just like he thinks he should be.

He’s not fit to love or be loved, something just isn’t right in the corrupted tissues and fibers that make him up.

All Zayn could do was tell Liam that he loved him as he shut the door, closing off the most important part of his life, but really, you can’t love something you don’t really know and Liam didn’t really know Zayn.

Zayn loves Liam and he always will but Liam never loved him. Liam held him on this pedestal that had cracked and fallen and turned to dust underneath the weight of all the assumptions he’d made about who Zayn was.

Liam never loved _Zayn._

He only loved who he thought Zayn would become. 


End file.
